


spruce up my soul (you fill it with coal)

by zhuzhubi



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: (lindsey), Addiction, Angst, Drug Abuse, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, Mentions of Prostitution, Post-Prison, Prison, Season/Series 12 Spoilers, Substance Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, mentions of possible sexual assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:41:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28374834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zhuzhubi/pseuds/zhuzhubi
Summary: it's not as simple as just moving the drugs like he's supposed to(or, prison/post-prison spencer is faced with a relapse)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 67





	spruce up my soul (you fill it with coal)

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by 'mr. rattlebone' by matt maeson! i highly recommend the song btw :)
> 
> ...
> 
> also on tumblr @zhuzhubii

Spencer’s heart is racing in his chest as he waits in the laundry room, folding bed sheets and pilling them up with near-obsessive care. It’s the type of repetitive task he does at home - _used to_ do at home - when he’s anxious and needs something to slow down his brain. It’s not helping right now, not really - Spencer knew it wouldn’t. Nothing helps anymore.

The wheels of a hamper rattle on the concrete floor and Spencer’s breath catches in his throat. He doesn’t look up just yet, just keeps folding and folding as if the thin sheets will offer some miraculous escape from his situation. They don’t, of course they don’t - how could they? They’re just bed sheets, just long rectangles of fabric so thin they can’t even protect him from the cold.

“Reid,” the other inmate mutters under his breath. Spencer looks up through a mane of unbrushed, flat curls, holding eye contact even as every ounce of his wiry form is screaming for him not to.

The other man raises an eyebrow and lifts the top sheet before replacing it again, flashing a thin packet of yellowy-white powder -

_“You, um - are you selling?”_

_Spencer clutches his midsection as the man gives him a once over. He swallows nervously as he stares down at the alleyway floor, shuffling back and forth in shame and embarrassment, pulling at the sleeves of his cheap, scratchy jacket. He finds himself thumbing over the crooks of his arms and grimaces when he notices the unconscious gesture. But he doesn’t force himself to stop like he usually would - instead, he peers up at the man through foggy eyes and plays up his desperation. It’ll probably get him charged extra, but hey - it’s better than not getting any at all._

_The man snorts and rolls his eyes, unfurling to his full height and taking a few steps closer. “Come on, man,” he scoffs, “You’re gonna have to do better than that. For all I know, you could be a cop.”_

_“I’m not a cop,” Spencer glares, gritting his teeth even as he shrinks back a little. And it’s true - he’s not a cop, but being a fed’s not much better._

_“Sound’s like something a cop would say,” the man leers. It’s obvious he’s just giving Spencer a hard time now, just having a bit of fun before inevitably making a sale. It sends a jolt of anger running through Spencer’s veins, just as sudden and furious as it always is now._

_Spencer glares at the man, breathing heavily and almost growling as he tears his sleeve up to his bicep and shoves his arm over. “I’m not a fucking cop,” he snaps, brandishing the angry red tracks, the collapsed veins, “Now sell me my shit or I’m going somewhere else.”_

_“Alright, alright. I get the message,” the man chuckles, raising his arms in mock defense and backing off with a smirk, “What can I get for ya?”_

\- Spencer blinks his eyes and he’s back in the laundry room, gripping the metal table so tightly he can barely feel his hands. He’s alone now and he doesn’t know how much time has passed, just that no one else is around and there’s a bag of heroin in front of him. A few minutes ago he had a plan, but now all he can think about is the drugs. About how much better he’ll feel if he just -

_The glass is cold in Spencer’s palms as he rolls it around, tilting his hand back and forth and watching the way it dances, the way it glimmers when it catches the light. He’s been home for three days and he hasn’t taken it (not yet)._

_He’s been home for two days and he hasn’t slept either, hasn’t been able to choke down a meal or read a book or watch television. He can’t hold a train of thought for more than a few seconds, can’t close his eyes without being back in that shed, without hearing **choose one to die** and **god’s will** and seeing a gun going **click click click** two inches from his head. _

_He wants it to stop for just one damn second. He wants to go back to his normal life, to his library trips and Star Trek marathons and letters to his mom. But everything hurts. His foot hurts from when TobiasCharlesRaphael struck it with wood, his body hurts from being beaten, his head hurts from the series of seizures he had in the hospital. His stomach hurts because he hasn’t eaten. It hurts because he can’t stop gagging, because he can’t get the smell of burning fish out of his nose._

_Spencer knows he shouldn’t have stolen the drugs, should’ve let that vice die with Tobias. But he didn’t. And so here he sits in his apartment, turning a vial of his soon-to-be poison over and over in his palms. Here he is mulling it over, here he is realizing that he just doesn’t have the will to resist anymore_

\- takes some. And so he does, he pulls open the bag and starts trying to calculate a dose. But it’s impossible to know - Spencer’s almost certain it’s heroin in front of him, but he has no idea how pure or impure it is, has no idea what else it’s cut with. He’s never snorted before, but there sure as hell isn’t anything on hand he could melt and inject with, so it’s looking like his only option.

He pinches some and holds it up to his nose, clenches his mouth shut and sucks in a quick breath through his nose. It burns in a way he never expected, fills up his nasal cavity and causes an uncomfortable pressure as he sniffs and sniffs, trying to force it down into his lungs. The high doesn’t kick in right away and it frustrates him. 

Logically, he knew it wouldn’t, he knew it would take a few minutes to absorb. But it still makes him panic, makes him think _why isn’t it working, oh god why don’t I feel better?_ And so he snorts some more, not thinking clearly enough to realize that he’s risking an overdose. 

Not really _caring_ that he’s risking an overdose.

When the high finally washes over him it’s the biggest relief he’s ever felt. He doesn’t have to worry about anything now, doesn’t have to worry about Shaw or Scratch or the fact that he might never get to go back home again. He doesn’t have to be afraid, doesn’t have to _think_ about how afraid he is, how hopeless he feels. It doesn’t matter because he’s high and he hasn’t felt this way in years and _damn_ does it feel good.

But it doesn’t last, it never does. There’s always the inevitable come down, the inevitable pit in his stomach once the high fades and he realizes -

_Spencer’s alone when he wakes up, when he blinks his eyes open to some unfamiliar shabby apartment, to used syringes on the bedside table. He shuts his eyes and turns away from them, his lip quivering as he chokes down tears of…of so many things that Spencer doesn’t even know._

_He told himself he’d never stoop this low, that he’d never let the drugs take control. He promised himself that he’d just use Tobias’ drugs and be done, that he’d never go out and buy his own. And then when he failed miserably at even_ attempting _to stop, he promised himself he’d always be careful about what he took, that he’d never shoot street drugs. He promised himself that he wouldn’t take more than he could pay for, that he’d never slip on his bills or pawn anything off for drugs._

_Well here he is, waking up the morning after shooting more heroin than he could pay for and selling sex to his dealer because it’s less scary than being indebted to him._

_Spencer doesn’t want to think about it anymore, so he peels himself up off of the bed and starts searching for his clothes. He pulls them on as quickly as he can and then rushes out the door, keeping his head down as he makes his way to the nearest Metro stop. He’s almost fifteen minutes late when he finally makes it to work. His friends teammates send looks at each other across the bullpen, but not a single one of them says a word_

\- what he’s done. 

This time, Spencer panics. He comes to and sees yellow powder scattered over a metal table, over the concrete floor. He hears footsteps and voices outside the laundry room, knows what will happen if he gets caught moving the drugs. 

The plan he came up with last night is completely gone. He tries to get his brain to work, but he’s still foggy from the high and it’s like his thoughts have been turned into mush. He starts looking around with wild eyes, trying to rub away the fog as his chest heaves with shaky breaths. And then he sees it - he sees the laundry supplies, and he has an idea. He knows how to get himself out of this.

…

He feels… _blank_ when he finds out it was Cat all along. He feels blank when he’s sitting across from her and playing her game. Letting her play with him, rather - it’s not like he has any say in the matter.

But then she’s on the phone with Lindsey, his mother’s voice is echoing through the line. He hears a gunshot, an explosion. A woman in a prison uniform calling his mother a moron, telling him _if she’s dead, it’s your fault -_

_Spencer remembers the day he had his mother institutionalized with startling clarity. He remembers the fear in pain in her eyes. How betrayed she felt, how selfish he felt for doing that to her. He remembers how he couldn’t face her for years, how he sent letters and dropped off gifts but never visited._

_He remembers how it felt when she forgave him, when she told him he did the right thing for them both. Somehow, it just made him feel worse, it just made him feel like he didn’t deserve her. He loves her more than anything else in the world, but he couldn’t take care of her anymore. He felt like he was falling apart, he felt like she was falling apart too. He knows intellectually that he did what was best for her but…_

_Sometimes he wonders if it’s all his fault, if the world is causing her pain because he’s a bad son. He wonders if the schizophrenia is for being a bad son, if the Alzheimer’s is his punishment for sending her away and wasting his precious time with her. He wonders if it’s his punishment for thinking he deserved anything more than a lifetime of hurting_

\- He has her up against the wall before he can think better of it. He’s clenching his hands around her tiny little delicate neck and applying pressure where he knows it’ll hurt. He’s leaning in and whispering _I’m gonna kill you_ and meaning it more than anything else he’s said in his entire life.

He can feel JJ trying to pull him back, trying to stop him from doing something he’ll regret. But Spencer can’t imagine how he would regret this at all - she took his sobriety, she had him sexually assaulted and sent to prison on a murder charge. She killed his mother, and if he has to spend the rest of his life rotting away in a jail cell because he killed the person who killed his mother? He wouldn’t regret it, not at all.

But then the fight just falls out of him. If his mother really is dead, then nothing matters anymore. He’d rather be able to go home and quietly kill himself than go back to prison and get stuck in a turtle suit, on suicide watch for years and years to come. 

And so he lets go. He lets JJ pull him away, he stares at Cat’s self-satisfied smirk before tucking his tail between his legs and running himself. 

There’s nowhere to hide out in the hall of the correctional facility, so he just curls himself into a tight ball and buries his face in his legs. He feels locked in, feels like maybe he _should_ be locked in, maybe he _should_ be kept away so that he won’t keep hurting the people he loves the most. He thinks about how he got high and poisoned the drugs, about how he almost killed six people with his carelessness. He thinks about how he used to inject during cases, how being sober was the last thing on his mind when he raised his gun.

JJ comes over to comfort him and he feels like he doesn’t deserve it at all. She tells him that his mother is alive and he feels as though he doesn’t deserve that either, like he doesn’t deserve to win this time. JJ doesn’t know what he did, how much of a fuck up he is. She doesn’t know that he’s not clean anymore, that he had a better plan for dealing with Shaw (even though he still can’t remember what it was).

He feels like spilling his guts all of the sudden, wants to tell her so that she’ll scream at him like he deserves. But then he figures out Cat’s puzzle, and there’s no time for self-loathing anymore.

…

It’s about three weeks later and Spencer’s apartment is finally quiet, has finally settled into something of a daily routine. He finally managed to find a nurse willing to care for his mother after the last one was murdered, and spends the rest worrying about whether or not his therapist is buying the act he’s been putting on.

Normally he likes it when his apartment is quiet, but things are different now. There’s no chaos to distract him, no catching up on bills to worry about. His mother is asleep and the nurse has gone home. There’s nothing that needs to get done. There’s no one ordering him around, and Spencer doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore.

All the things he’s been avoiding suddenly come crashing back down, creep up his neck and start suffocating him from the inside out. He hears Shaw whispering from the shadows, sees Cat lurking behind the curtains, hears someone saying _Spencer it’s Maeve, it’s okay, you want this -_

His phone is in his hand and he’s dialing numbers before a second thought even crosses his mind. He reaches disconnected number after disconnected number, growing more and more frantic until -

_“Who’s this?” a surprisingly soft voice echoes through the phone._

_“It’s, um…I-I got your number from Ricky? He said you might have some -”_

_“Shut it, not over the phone,” the person barks, sighing in exasperation, “My place, one hour. Cash only.”_

\- “Who’s this?” a familiar voice echoes through the phone.

“It’s, um…it’s Spencer?”

“Spencer? Tall, scrawny, brown curly hair? That Spencer?”

“Yeah, um,” Spencer stutters, “That’s me.”

“Wow,” the person mutters, “Haven’t heard from you in a long time.”

“I…,” he sighs, “I cleaned up. For a while, I guess.”

“Mm, I hear that a lot,” a pause, “Well. I’m still at the same place, you want the usual?”

And then Spencer takes a moment to really think about it, to think about what he’s doing. He doesn’t have a dependence yet, he could walk away right now and no one would be any the wiser. There’d be no withdrawal to deal with, no shame over relapsing.

“Yeah,” Spencer nods, “Sounds good.”

…

Emily calls him over to her place one night after work and somehow Spencer just _knows_. She opens the door and gestures for him to sit down on the couch, offers him a glass of water with a carefully neutral expression. And Spencer _knows_ that he’s about to get fired, that he’s used up all his chances, that he’s pushed her too far -

She pushes a paper rectangle over to him, the sheen glossy under the lamplight as it slides over the coffee table. Spencer looks down at in on instinct and realizes it’s a brochure, see’s that it’s for a -

“Rehab clinic?” he swallows, pursing his lips as he turns it over in his hands, “You want me to go to _rehab?_ You’re…I thought you called me here to fire me.”

“Oh,” Emily whispers, sympathy filling her voice as she leans forward and takes Spencer’s hands in hers, “Oh Spencer, no. No, I’m not firing you. You’re my friend, I’ve known you for more than ten years. I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure it doesn’t come to that, okay?”

Spencer bites his bottom lip and furrows his brow, “But why? I…Emily I don’t…I’m not a good person, I don’t deserve this -”

She squeezes his hands, says, “Spencer, look at me,” in her unit chief voice. And so he looks up at her, not bothering to brush his unkempt hair out of his eyes.

“Spencer,” she repeats, her voice trembling as she tries to hold her composure, “I’ve watched you struggle for a long time. Almost since I first met you, in fact. And you’ve made some bad decisions, some bad calls. You’ve done some things I’m sure you’re not proud of, I’ll admit that. But you have _always_ been a good man, for every last second that I’ve been your friend. I’ll be damned if I give up on you just because things are hard, because you’re not perfect all the time. You _do_ deserve it - you deserve to be happy, to be well. Life dealt you a bad hand, but don’t think for _one second_ that you deserve to be in pain. Because you don’t, you deserve so much more than what life has given you.”

“Emily…” Spencer whispers, his eyes watering and his breath hitching in his chest.

She moves to sit beside him, lifting her arms as if to ask can I give you a hug? Spencer nods, clenching his eyes shut as her arms wrap around his shoulders. He collapses into her and it brings up a memory of Georgia, of falling into Hotch’s arms on unsteady legs and mumbling _I knew you’d understand_ to the uncharacteristically shaken man.

 _It won’t help,_ his brain mutters, _they won’t help. They didn’t do anything last time, why would this be any different? Don’t fall for it, don’t fall for it Spencer -_

“It’s gonna be okay,” Emily soothes as she rubs circles over his back, “It’s not gonna be easy, but I promise you it’ll be okay.”

A sudden sob wracks his frame, rattling every inch of his thin body as the wet sound escapes onto Emily’s shoulder. Tears and snot trail down his face as he cries out his frustration with the world, with himself, with his _friends._ He hadn’t realized just how much he was waiting for someone to say that, how much he was waiting for someone to ask how he is without expecting him to be okay. To just hold him and let him cry. It feels like he’s been waiting _years_ for it to finally happen, even though he didn’t know that he was waiting at all.

He’s not sure yet if he believes that things will get better. He’s not convinced that rehab will help, but…he’s willing to give it a go. Because for the first time since before prison, he actually _wants_ life to get better. And there’s still the nagging thoughts, the voices saying _you deserve this, you deserve to be sick and miserable._ But for the first time in a very long time, Spencer remembers that it’s not true at all.


End file.
